They reckoned you could hear a Scott motorbike as far away as Harden on the days they were raced up Hepolite Scar in Bradford.

They didn't roar. The water-cooled engine had a jacket around the cylinder which kept the engine note down to a hum. They were serious contenders in the motorcycling world, not just on the testing ride up the scar, near King's Road, but all over the country.

The Scott Trials, staged on rough country all over the north, were a test of rider as much as machine.

Today the Scott Owners Club has members throughout the world and enthusiasts still gather to sing the praises of their designer, Alfred Angas Scott.

His first foray into engineering was the development of a toggle braking system for pushbikes in 1887. In 1901 he developed a new engine and fitted it to a Premier bike frame. This prompted him to start his business in 1906 in a small, stable-like building in Snowden Street, off Manningham Lane, building the engine known as the 222 (two cylinders, two stroke, two speed) with which he was later to become disenchanted.

He and his partner, his twin brother Arthur Forbes Scott, moved to a new factory behind Mornington Villas and began turning out engines at the rate of 13 a week.

When the First World War came along, Scott's engines and his expertise were put at the disposal of the nation, and a motorcycle-sidecar combo with a machine gun on board was displayed for a reluctant War Office.

He was invited to show them to his monarch, and disgraced himself slightly by taking too big a sweep while turning at Buckingham Palace, and wrecked one of King George V's flower beds.

His machine gun carrier saw service in France, but not his three-wheeler gun carriage. No matter - Scott was not a man to waste an idea and when the war finished, he was ready to produce the Scott Sociable.

This was a three-wheeled light car based on a motorcycle configuration which was going to join the race to put motoring in the hands of the common man.

Sadly the race was won by the likes of William Morris, Herbert Austin and Henry Ford. The Sociable, though wonderfully engineered, was too expensive and light. Cheap four-wheelers saw it off.

Only 120 were made and probably half a dozen remain - as sought-after collectibles.

"I have made a car for the working man," said a bitter Scott, "and only the rich will buy it."

He built factories at Lidget Green and then at Saltaire - where the Sociable was built. At Saltaire he continued to produce bikes which had earned a reputation as winners in the Isle of Man TT races. It was a great advertisement.

So, too, was the idea of photographing young women on his machines to show how user-friendly they were.

But he remained more interested in engineering than women and never married.

He was a man's man and loved climbing and caving.

It was the latter which was to be his downfall. After a Gritstone Climbing Club expedition in 1923, when he and fellow club members tried to find a passage linking Diccan Pot and Alum Pot, he emerged soaking wet.

He set off back to Bradford in his Sociable without changing his clothes, caught a cold which became pneumonia, and died aged 43.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.